


Damn Unassailable Loyalty

by jenni3penny



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 13:24:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13388736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenni3penny/pseuds/jenni3penny
Summary: "The first of them dies when Charlotte is just starting pre-school and she doesn't understand a moment of what's happening as her mother breaks down in the kitchen, sobbing as her hands curl the counter edge and go white knuckled."Warning: played some fast and loose with canon and sent Will to Germany after MacKenzie was stabbed but other than that? Post-series. Charlotte included.





	Damn Unassailable Loyalty

She's thirteen weeks pregnant and he jarringly remembers, with near violent accuracy, how pale she'd looked in Landstuhl. How ashen and near translucent her skin had gone, sickly glass and near cracked and the Captain/Doctor that had let him in, despite not being family, had told him that she'd get her color back relatively quickly and “ _you can talk to her, you know_?”...

He'd never said a word to her.

Not when he hadn't seen her in more than months.

When he wasn't even supposed to be there, he wasn't supposed to know.

Just lifted her hand and kissed the center of her palm and it had been an awfully stupid thing to do. An utter waste of both time and money and especially when he had to be back on the air seventeen hours from the exact moment when she'd moaned and unconsciously curled her fingers reaching against his face. It had been monumentally stupid to go there considering the fact he knew her father would never let his little girl linger alone and in pain in a European hospital, not unless he was in the hospital himself again.

She's at thirteen weeks and the morning sickness has her looking so sickly at times, so grayed and washed out that it reminds him of the four and a half hours he sat by her side before he heard Ambassador J. Gerald McHale's valved baritone half down the hall and kissed her fingertips so quickly that he was afraid he'd actually woken her as he'd ducked from the room and in the opposite direction of a voice he was otherwise generally drawn toward.

He considers telling her that the last time he'd seen her look so sickly was when he'd scrambled to get the next flight outta JFK, straight into Germany and it was a wonder, actually... that the Marine Gunnery Sergeant that had been hovering near her door hadn't ever told her that she'd had a visitor. The man had obviously recognized him. Or simply recognized the glaze of legitimate terror in his eyes, pained fear that she was going to die from what they'd done to her, from what _he_ had essentially done to her.

And no one who was a daily fixture of their life ever would have known he'd been in Germany if it weren't for the damn unassailable loyalty of the United States Marine Corps.

 

* * *

 

 

She's seventeen weeks pregnant and he's getting marginally annoyed by her inescapable excitement. She can't stop chattering on and on about one of “ _the Guys_ ” visiting the studio and now she's also, apparently, invited him to a rundown meeting. Which means he's going to have a hardcore Marine hovering all over his wife and also likely siding with Jim when it comes to any disagreement or argument they may have over the broadcast.

Because, no matter what, he's gonna look like the asshole in comparison _and_ he's still just roughed enough on the edges when it comes to their time apart, still tender and sore when it comes to the idea that after he pushed her away she was round-the-clock surrounded by men who likely needed the softness of a woman nearby.

But he also wants to impress these men who she deeply respects, adores, and he just... well, he's pretty sure it's _not_ gonna happen.

 

* * *

 

 

It's well into Week Eighteen when Sergeant Silliman arrives and Will wants to like him but he'll be fucked if it isn't the exact same man that was at her doorstep years before and he'll be double fucked if the first words outta the man's mouth are “ _Right, yeah, we met at Landstuhl_.”

They hadn't actually, not exactly.

(And thank you, Karma, for being both fickle and fucking predictably assholic.)

Their definitions of properly meeting someone diverge considerably because Will knows for a fact that they never spoke to each other outside of nodding and near grunt-like breath sounds.

Not that it fucking mattered when she squinted between them and blinked and Will caught how quickly her eyes blued toward squall dark and gray. “Landstuhl? As in... Germany?”

 

* * *

 

 

“Honey, I had to make sure you were gonna be all right.”

“Why didn't you stay?” It's damning, that question. Because it could have solved them years before.

If only he'd just stayed and held her hand until she'd woken up.

He doesn't know how to tell her that he hadn't been able to face her, even then.

And of course she's crying now, _of course_. Because they can't fucking discuss this like human beings. They can't get to this place without scraping the hell out of each other on the way to their destination. Two cars on the same highway and headed in the same direction and, fuck, if one of them doesn't take the swerve then they're both gonna just... crash into something. “Will?”

He exhales hard, a cynical laugh curtailing the last of his breath. “Why'd you leave?”

Besides the fact he'd emphatically (regretfully) told her to get the fuck out?

She blinks and there's a jumble of colors in her eyes, the hazel fracturing, “I couldn't face you.”

“Exactly.”

Fucking _exactly that_.

 

* * *

 

 

Charlotte is just over seven months old and a package shows up in the mail from Camp Dwyer.

“Must be easier to get mail out of Garmsir District now.” she tells him through a broad grin and she's through the roof with excitement as she tries to rip it open. “Afghanistan.”

He couldn't give two shits where Camp Dwyer is now that she's home and safe and a happy little twist in his gut reminds him that now she's a mother, now she's stationary and still. She'd never leave Charlie behind. Even if he were to well and truly fuck up... MacKenzie's spent patient years proving the depth of her love for him and he knows that within moments of meeting their (screaming and wailing) daughter... that love had been utterly eclipsed. He'd lost her just as much as he'd found her, really. And she would never, _never_ , be away from her daughter without a plan to get right back to her as soon as she could.

But she starts sorting through the package, papers mostly, and he hears the small breathy sound she makes. “Oh, Will... look at this one.”

He's only half paying attention to anything she's been sorting through because most of his attention is on the fact he's got a seven month old tucked into his chest and curled up as tightly as her little body can get. So it's a slow shift of his body toward hers, a lazy lean into the side of the kitchen island counter.

“ _Billy_.” She's in awe as she lays the item flat to the counter and looks up at him helplessly, searching for words. Will just leans forward, cupping his palm entirely against the back of his daughter's head, the other hand supporting her butt and back as he studies a drawing that's been sent to her.

It's a completely illustrated drawing, fully shaded and fleshed out on the back of a torn out bubble mailer. It's blue and black and he doesn't doubt that the excellent sketch of Mac was done entirely with ball point pens. She's younger in the drawing and it's been done entirely by memory and it strikes him suddenly... that another man should know her features so well as he does. That another man can close his eyes and see MacKenzie's face after a long separation. He can feel how tight his features tampen as he looks up at her and arches a brow.

She matches the look with a dry roll of the eyes. “Don't make that face. It's a lovely gift.”

“He's been in love with you nearly as long as I have, Mac,” he tells her, supposedly complacent but nothing near. “It's impressive.”

“He's not in love with me, Will.” She rolls her eyes and lifts the drawing again and he's kissing the corner of his mouth against Charlotte's barely-there-hair while she touches the pen lines lightly. “He's gay.”

And? So?

“He's a little bit in love with you, hon,” he argues on a dry chuckle, voice quiet. “Regardless of sexual orientation.”

She shakes her head and makes a noise of disagreement, still rubbing fingertips over ink. “He was six weeks past his eighteenth birthday when I met him. And scared to death.” 

He thinks that if he were young and afraid... he'd fall in love with her all over again.

 

* * *

 

 

Mac writes him (them all, actually) long letters that float around the apartment, left on counters or tables, before being sent.

She'll pause in the middle of a sentence when she realizes that Charlie needs her juice and come back to it eighteen hours later (sometimes twenty, sometimes three days), still able to finish her thought after a day (or week) full of work. He envies that particular trait of hers, that attentive memory retention.

Mac writes letters and Charlie colors all over them, colors her own pictures too. She makes them masterpieces wherein extraordinarily obese and neon green horses stand amid wispy trees, strange circular things that even he can't identify in the sky – his child is either oddly infatuated with UFOs or she sees clouds far differently than he does. When it comes to Charlotte either one could be as equally legitimate.

So... his girls send love and he takes care of the support instead.

Loaded credit cards, books, burner phones, magazines, phone cards, movies and music.

He pays for some body armor and night vision equipment with the assistance of some military aides that work in the District and they'll never know it was him. Mac's also never gonna know how much it cost and neither of those things matter in the long run anyhow.

 

* * *

 

 

The first of them dies when Charlotte is just starting pre-school and she doesn't understand a moment of what's happening as her mother breaks down in the kitchen, sobbing as her hands curl the counter edge and go white knuckled.

“C'mon, Pip,” he hums as softly comforting as he can, lifting Charlie up even as she fights to get to Mac instead.

“No!”

He's gotta decide which one of them to take care of and it stalls him a moment.

He chooses his daughter over his wife and the moment he lifts Charlotte entirely into his chest (sobbing all the way) he can feel self hatred burrow inside his lungs just for choosing one over the other.

But then... Charlie needs him and MacKenzie very clearly doesn't want to be touched.

He can see it in the way her body curls in on itself like something is crawling all over her. And all little Charlotte wants to do is cling to her mother, comfort her with hugs and kid-kisses.

“I've got it.” She hasn't lied to him in ages (he can tell the difference these days) but she's fine full of lies and platitudes now. He can see it, hear it, but he doesn't have the heart to try and make her face it. Not when her eyes are glossy with half held tears and she can't even look at her daughter as a hand lifts between them. “I'm fine. Take her.”

“Honey - ”

“I'm _fine_ , Billy.” Because MacKenzie will always try to be strong, even as she damn near hyperventilates. She'll always fight to seem invincible and mostly especially when Charlotte is involved. He doesn't understand why she can be vulnerable with him but not with their own daughter. It's simply MacKenzie, really. To demand maternal perfection of herself. To set herself up to fail and then wallow in her own insecurity.

She's also _not_ fine. She's nowhere near the vicinity of fine, in fact.

She's about to break down, holding her pieces together against the edge of their kitchen counter, the smell of burning coffee in the air.

Unintentionally he thinks to himself that this is simply a grisly preview of what will happen on the day they lose the Ambassador. This is only a _fraction_ of what will happen on the day her father dies.

And the irony of him thinking it while his daughter wails against his shoulder isn't lost on him at all.


End file.
